


Wakanda Night Is This

by ElphieRix



Series: Horrible Coping Mechanisms For The End Of The World [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Also I Am Not Nice To Steve Rogers, And They Have No Interest In Going To Relationshipville, Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Buckets of it, But Nebula And Valkyrie Take The Train To Bonetown, Can't Believe I Am Tagging This In 2018 But, Canon Compliant Until Avengers 4 Comes Out, Civil War Team Iron Man, Everyone swears a lot, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), Like I'm Not MEAN But There Will Be No Reconciliation In This Fic, Other, People Love And Support Tony Stark, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Rated M For Very Brief Sexual Content, Sort of a fix it, There's a lot of swearing, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Valki Endgame, second in a series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 19:06:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14754554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElphieRix/pseuds/ElphieRix
Summary: Tony drains his glass. Valkyrie risks a brief look at him and is almost transfixed. For the first time since she’s known him his eyes aren’t empty. They are burning.“How many futures did the Timekeeper see?” Asks Nebula, scepticism lacing every syllable.“Fourteen million six hundred and five,” says Tony, the number tripping easily over his tongue as if he’s repeated it a hundred times. He probably has, thinks Valkyrie.“And we win in one,” says Nebula flatly.As always when she hears those numbers, the weight of potential possibilities presses heavily on Valkyrie’s heart. Every single decision they make spirals out in front of her, reaching back into the past and far out into the future. Every one of them could tip them off course. Their magnitude is overwhelming. Paralysing.“Yes,” says Tony. “The only way.”-Valkyrie and the Asgardian refugees begin to make a life on Earth.ORVal and Tony and Nebula are sad in Wakanda.Sequel to Flight Of The Commodore, read that first.





	Wakanda Night Is This

There is dirt under her fingernails. There has been dirt under her fingernails almost ever since the _Commodore_ arrived in Wakanda nearly a week ago. Running a refugee camp takes Work. There is dirt under her fingernails and in the creases of her hands and her lower back aches. It’s good, keeping busy. It’s so good. Valkyrie doesn’t have to be alone with her thoughts when she is putting up tents and digging drainage ditches and carting food and medicine back and forth. Someone always needs something, and with Thor and Bruce spending every waking hour in the palace, in meeting after meeting to try and solve the impossible problem that is Thanos, she is the one to give it to them.

 

And when nighttime settles over the plain and her people stop asking and needing and taking? Well, Wakandan liquor is very good.

 

She hasn’t seen Loki since they landed. It’s a little surprising, Valkyrie didn’t think Loki was capable of lying low. There is, however, a pretty woman in the camp with a sharp smile and glittering eyes that she could swear wasn’t with them before. Valkyrie grimaces. She didn’t know Loki could do that and she hates how much she likes it.

 

She hates that she kind of misses her. She hates that she even thinks about Loki that way. She hates the idea that anyone could replace Sigrún.

 

She hates a lot of things, these days.

 

Some nights Tony and Nebula join her, and she doesn’t hate that. They sit outside her tent and drink until the sky is painted in all the colours of the morning. It’s always spectacular.

 

By rights, the universe should be frozen. Nothing should ever change again and everything should remain exactly as it was the very moment Thanos ripped existence in two. But things have a habit of changing anyway, with no respect for should.

 

One such change happens at night as she is drinking with Tony and Nebula. The stars are clear and bright overhead and Nebula looks at them with longing. Tony doesn’t look at them at all. Valkyrie used to love the stars, but now they just make her feel numb. Every one of those stars is grieving.

 

“Strange told me there was no other way,” says Tony. “What does that mean, huh?”

 

Valkyrie and Nebula say nothing. He has said this before, on their long journey to Wakanda. They contemplate the contents of their glasses instead, knowing that the only way for Tony to get through this is to just let him talk. To let him try and solve the puzzle of his unjust salvation.

 

“See, to me, that sounds like one of two things,” he continues. “Either this was the only way for _anyone_ to survive and he would have murdered everyone in the whole universe, which just doesn’t scream ‘Thanos’ to me. Or he meant that there’s a way outta this.”

 

Tony drains his glass. Valkyrie risks a brief look at him and is almost transfixed. For the first time since she’s known him his eyes aren’t empty. They are burning.

 

“How many futures did the Timekeeper see?” Asks Nebula, scepticism lacing every syllable.

 

“Fourteen million six hundred and five,” says Tony, the number tripping easily over his tongue as if he’s repeated it a hundred times. _He probably has,_ thinks Valkyrie.

 

“And we win in one,” says Nebula flatly.

 

As always when she hears those numbers, the weight of potential possibilities presses heavily on Valkyrie’s heart. Every single decision they make spirals out in front of her, reaching back into the past and far out into the future. Every one of them could tip them off course. Their magnitude is overwhelming. Paralysing.

 

“Yes,” says Tony. “The only way.”

 

“But what if we make it worse. We’ve already lost so many people.” Valkyrie hates herself as she’s saying it, but that doesn’t stop it from being any less true. “We can’t lose anyone else.”

 

“What makes them worth more than the ones he took?” Tony snaps at her. He’s never snapped at her before. He’s been biting and acerbic and sarcastic, but never nasty. She knows he means _What makes_ us _worth more?_ but-

 

“They’re more alive.” Valkyrie shoots back.

 

Tony glares at her bitterly, still with those burning eyes. Valkyrie wonders if this is what he was like before, all quick words and determination and hope. She wonders if this is what forged Iron Man.

 

She glances at Nebula, who is studying her drink again. When she looks back to Tony he has already turned away and is stalking his way back to the palace. She watches him go until his figure fades into the dark.

 

“Y’know if anyone could do it,” says Nebula pensively, in that calm way she only has when she’s very drunk.

 

“It would be him,” says Valkyrie.

 

The next change comes quickly, the very next night, when she pins Nebula against the wall of the Commodore and fucks her fast and hard and doesn’t let her return the favour. It might be the best distraction yet. There’s no feeling in it. Nebula expects nothing but to come under her fingers and Valkyrie expects nothing but to make her. They never even kiss.

 

Valkyrie secretly suspects that Nebula is the most lost of them all. At least she has her work, and Tony has whatever he’s doing in the palace. Nebula just sort of... drifts from place to place. Of course it’s Nebula so the drifting is actually quite menacing, but it hasn’t escaped Valkyrie’s notice that she has nothing to do.

 

She starts asking her to assist with things she needs no help with. The cyborg sneers and insults her competency, and eagerly throws herself into every task. Valkyrie is surprised by how much easier everything is with an extra pair of hands. It’s been a very long time since she worked with someone like this. It’s good.

 

Then there is the day she meets Steve Rogers. He is exiting Thor’s tent as she arrives to ask the King -again- about his plans for leaving Wakanda. They cannot, they should not, stay here forever and Thor needs to plan for that instead of trying to beat an enemy that has already won.

 

The Captain greets her warmly and extends a hand to her. Valkyrie know that Midgardians shake hands, but she cannot stop thinking about those fists beating against Tony’s metal suit with no regard for the flesh inside and she definitely does not want to touch them. So she just stares at him until he coughs uncomfortably.

 

“I’m Steve Rogers,” he says. Then after a long pause where she doesn’t say anything: “I’m an Avenger.”

 

“Yes. I know who you are.”

 

“And you’re the Valkyrie,” he says.

 

“Yes.”

 

She is well aware she is being cruel, she can see the loss hanging off of him just like everyone else, but she can’t bring herself to care.

 

“Thor tells me you’re one of his heroes,” says Rogers good-naturedly.

 

“I was.”

 

“Well, we’re going to need all the heroes we can get to defeat Thanos,” he continues, slightly awkwardly now but still trying to be friendly despite the fact that he’s clearly picked up on her distaste.

 

“I was never a hero,” she tells him, surprising herself with her honesty to this man she does not think deserves it. “I was a soldier, and I haven’t been that for a long time. If the King orders me to fight I will fight but foremost I will protect what is left of my people.”

 

Rogers nods curtly, like he disagrees but can tell it’s not worth it, or he doesn’t know her well enough, to argue. He leaves quickly after that, heading not towards the palace but further out onto the plain. To where the battle was.

 

“Hey, you haven’t seen Tony around?” says a stranger as the Captain walks away. The man is not Asgardian and his legs are caged in metal braces. Valkyrie eyes them with interest, Tony had made a pair very like them when they were on the Commodore.

 

“No,” she says. “I haven’t seen him in a while.”

 

“Shit,” says the man, and then starts like he has forgotten something. “Sorry, James Rhodes.”

 

 _So this is Tony’s Rhodey,_ Valkyrie thinks, and this time she has no qualms reaching out and shaking the hand he offers her. She gives him her name and he sighs heavily.

 

“I was kinda hoping he’d be with the Cap but...” He gestures in the direction Captain Rogers went. “Obviously not.”

 

“Rogers?” Says Valkyrie with some surprise. “Why?”

 

“They’ve got a lot of bullshit to work out,” says Rhodes.

 

“Are they not able to work together?” She asks.

 

“What? No they’re working together fine I guess, but you know Tony, he can be very… _Tony_ when he wants to be and I know he’d feel better if they talked it out,” he says.

 

Valkyrie admits to herself that she is confused, to her Tony is doing well if he can stand to be in the same room as Rogers. She wonders what she’s missing.

 

“...are you expecting them to be friends again?” She eventually says.

 

“That would be nice,” says Rhodes. “But I’d settle for one conversation where they’re not at each other’s throats.”

 

Valkyrie snorts. “Concentrate on killing Thanos,” she says. “Then you can work on other miracles.”

 

Rhodes regards her thoughtfully and taps the top of his braces with his fingertips. “I just wish I knew what else happened,” he confesses quite casually. “It can’t just be the Accords, something else had to have happened.”

 

Valkyrie blinks at him in shock. With the way Tony had talked about his Rhodey she had been sure he would have told him about Siberia. But since arriving on Earth she has fast come to realise that Tony Stark is a lot more complicated than he had seemed on the _Commodore_.

 

“He should have told you,” she says.

 

“But he told you?” Says Rhodes and she tries not to be hurt by his slight tone of incredulity.

 

“There was fuck all to do on the way here but talk and drink,” she says. She knows it’s a terrible explanation but Rhodes seems to accept it. “You should ask him about it. Tell him if he won’t tell you I will.”

 

She doesn’t see Rhodes again and honestly it doesn’t bother her. It doesn’t. Except that it does. For some reason she is worried about Tony. There are plenty of more important things to be concerned about, but Valkyrie is worried about Tony.

 

Loki picks up on it, because of course she does. The very first time she speaks to her after her ridiculous stunt when they landed, Loki notices what’s bothering her.

 

They’re bickering about the heat as they dig an extension to what was only supposed to be a temporary cesspit. Loki hates Wakandan weather and although Valkyrie truly has no preference she is enjoying the Trickster’s frustration. She has stripped down to her undershirt and Loki’s eyes linger on her bare arms.

 

“Do you care for Stark?” Loki almost looks surprised she’s said it.

 

Valkyrie stops digging and leans on her spade. “I’m actively fucking Nebula and you ask if I care for Tony?” She says.

 

“That’s just sex,” replies Loki, waving a hand dismissively. “But I see how you worry for Stark. I wouldn’t blame you if you did, he’s certainly something.”

 

Loki’s gaze is piercing so Valkyrie starts digging again. “I do,” she says finally. “But not like that.”

 

 _Not like you_ hangs in the air between them, unsaid.

 

“I guess I shall seduce him myself then,” says Loki, grinning.

 

And Valkyrie actually laughs. A real, genuine, proper laugh. She doesn’t care to think about how long it’s been since she’s laughed like that.

 

After that, she stops fucking Nebula.

 

The cyborg doesn’t seem to mind, she is busy with other things. The Asgardians have all but adopted her and the creature Thor calls Rabbit so Valkyrie sees them more and more. They take over little everyday tasks and slowly but surely, the camp starts to run itself.

 

There are less and less people in the med tent each day, Loki and the other surviving scholars are retrieving reams and reams of Asgardian knowledge and finally, finally Thor has begun looking for a permanent place for them to stay. Valkyrie is fairly certain Bruce had something to do with that, she hasn’t missed the way their hands brush together too frequently for it to be accidental. Bruce is sensible, he will be good for Thor and she knows she should be pleased but she is finding it harder to be useful every single day. And with no way to be useful there is more time to think. And more time to think is the last thing she needs.

 

Tony’s betrothed is pregnant.

 

“The kid is fucked,” he says when he tells her. “It’s got no chance with me as a Dad. Even with the best Mom in the world...”

 

Valkyrie doesn’t know how to disagree with him. The kid is fucked but it’s not because of its father. The kid is fucked because the whole universe is fucked and even a man like Tony won’t be able to change that.

 

“I don’t think you’d be a bad father,” she says softly. “Although you should probably stop drinking.” He barks a laugh at that and Valkyrie doesn’t even try to take the bottle from his hands.

 

He’d sought her out when she reached the end of a long frustrating day of being completely and totally unnecessary and she’d been pathetically pleased to see him. They sat at the bar on the _Commodore_ and they drink. _Just like old times,_ Valkyrie thinks, because it was only a few weeks ago but time stretches longer since the world ended.

 

“We’ve got a plan Val,” says Tony. His eyes are burning again. “It could work. It could really work.”

 

Valkyrie meets his gaze and for the first time allows herself to hope. She allows herself to see what that future might be like. She sees a new Asgard and old friends restored. She sees a home, shining and permanent with no stain on its history. She sees a just King. Through it all Loki is there. Impossible, awful, incredible Loki smiling that same sharp smile they have whatever shape they take. Loki, who could never replace Sigrún, but who might just be the only person who could ever measure up to her memory.

 

“Alright Man of Iron,” she says, putting down her drink without finishing it. “Let’s save the fucking universe.”

**Author's Note:**

> No beta we die like men.
> 
> I've been more productive with this series in the past week than I have been in literal years. Idk what Infinity War has done to me.
> 
> I am incredibly hungry for feedback so please tell me what you think! I more or less know what is gonna happen in the last part but if there's anything in particular you'd like to see please let me know and I'll see if I can include it or maybe stick it in the "Snapshots" collection of extras.


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